A father says thanks

Saturday a San Diego lifeguard saved my 6-year-old son from drowning at Ocean Beach. In response to our thanks he said, "It's nothing, it happens every day."

Well, it's sure not nothing, and I want to thank him and all the other fine young men and women of San Diego who save lives every day.

DAVID SWANSON
San Diego

Write us

The San Diego Union-Tribune welcomes letters to the editor. Because of the number of letters received, and to allow as many readers as possible to be published, it is the policy of the newspaper to publish no more than one letter from the same author within 120 days. Letters may be edited. It is also our policy to publish letters supporting or opposing a particular issue in a ratio reflecting the number received on each side.

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Supervisors put lives
of children on the line

Twenty years ago, the state shifted responsibility for mental health services to the county. Now, based upon a technicality, the county plans to strand over 1,000 children and their families who desperately need mental health care. Further, the county wants to shift the burden to already strapped school districts, which will impact education for all our children.

San Diego County loses 300 lives to suicide each year, and 10 to 20 of these are youths. How can our county supervisors turn their backs on these precious lives? Why do they continuously drop the ball on mental health care? These children are severely depressed and suicidal. Losing even one life to suicide is a leadership failure. To cause this intentionally is criminal.

Transplant waiting lists
and how you can help

A recent article paints the transplant patient who advertised for a donor liver as some sort of clever hero and the survivors of the donor as a "generous family" ("Family's campaign secures life-saving liver for cancer patient," News, Aug. 14).

In reality, the patient is a selfish individual who, enabled by the misguided survivors of the donor, simply cut in infront of others on the list probably more qualified than he. The only hero here is the donor, and sadly his/her wishes were likely overridden.

I know from personal experience what the wait for a donor liver is all about, and I believe the system is fair and works well as it is. We do not want the clever or the powerful gaming the system and survivors of the donor presuming to know the donor's wishes.

Much needless suffering and death can be eliminated by simply changing from an "opt-in" to an "opt-out" system, and respecting the wishes of the donor by not allowing survivors to override them.

In the meantime, please exercise the power to give new life and prevent early and miserable death by becoming a potential donor and asking your family to respect your wishes.

DICK LARSEN
San Diego

Some muddled logic on
exercise of 'God's law'

Surely the Union-Tribune could have found a more thoughtful and rational column than Star Parker's commentary ("A clear choice in this Senate race," Opinion, Aug. 16).

Parker, a black conservative, certainly made clear that she strongly favors the conservative black candidate, Alan Keyes, over the liberal black candidate, Barack Obama, for the vacant Senate seat in Illinois.

Parker's stated reason for supporting Keyes, however, is completely specious. Parker defines the choice between the two men as a choice between man's law (apparently favored by Obama), under which people make the rules and can pervert them to create evil institutions like slavery, and God's law (evidently championed by Keyes), which provides us with a "standard that recognizes human dignity."

But Parker overlooks the inescapable fact that men decide what "God's law" is. For example, she claims that the abolition of slavery was prompted by "national recognition of God's law." Perhaps she is unaware that many people defended slavery on the ground that it was actually in concert with "God's law;" after all, they argued, the Bible approves it.

It was not national recognition of "God's law," but "man's law" – Abraham Lincoln's recognition that emancipation was politically important to the ongoing struggle to preserve the union – that prompted the end of slavery.

Support for human freedom and dignity is not found solely in religion. It can just as easily be based on secular standards like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

Parker's suggestion that law not based on religious principles is "capricious" is dangerous nonsense. Is Iran a better society than ours because it is a theocracy?

Parker states that the standard that has "protected life, liberty, and property so well" in this country is "our religion and our tradition." She conveniently ignores that the separation of church and state is a cornerstone of that "tradition."

FBI tries to suppress
convention protesters

George Orwell's book "1984," which was published in 1948, was both 20 years ahead of its time and 20 years behind in its warnings of big brother.

The predictions of government intrusion into personal freedoms actually occurred in the 1960s when the FBI wiretapped freedom-seeking radicals like Martin Luther King. In the 1960s local police departments filmed protesters and kept dossiers and used other forms of intimidation to quell dissent.

Now the FBI is at it again. Using the excuse that the so-called interviews "are focused solely on possible crimes," the FBI is questioning citizens from groups opposed to Bush administration policies.

In 1968 it was the war in Vietnam and communism which frightened the population into allowing such abuses. Today, it is the fear of Islamic terrorism and the war in Iraq.

Anyone believing this is not a breach of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms is living in a dream.

CHRIS FAUST
San Diego

Urban growth boundaries
can work very well

Owen Courreges, a research fellow with the libertarian Reason Foundation, in his commentary "Want even higher housing prices?" (Opinion, Aug. 6) blames Portland's high housing prices on the city's urban growth boundary (UGB).

In his overzealous attempt at discrediting growth controls, he compares housing price increases in Portland during the 1990s (110 percent) with the nation as a whole (49 percent), and attributes the disparity to Portland's UGB.

That is like comparing apples and mixed fruit. When compared with other large western metropolitan areas with the top ten median home price increases, Portland was not the metropolitan area with the largest increase. Denver was. Portland was second with other areas following closely. But note: Portland was the only one with a UGB. During the 1980s (the UGB was passed in 1979) price increases in Portland were lower than most other regions. Researchers seem to agree that the rapid price increases during the early 1990s in Portland were attributable to rapid employment and income growth.

While the UGB may reduce the availability of developable land, policies that encourage higher intensity of development have offset Portland's UGB containment effects. For example, half of all residentially zoned land in Portland is designated for attached housing.

These comments are not made in support of all growth controls. In many cases they are used as a sophisticated form of NIMBYism. But when accompanied by a viable and institutionalized system of intensification and infill, as in Portland, urban growth boundaries are an important tool in the battle against sprawl.

NICO CALAVITA
professor, Graduate Program in City Planning, San Diego State University

Coalition in Iraq War
actually is smaller

A letter published Aug. 14 stated, "In fact, the number of countries in the 'coalition of the willing' today is larger than the 1991 Gulf War coalition."

The writer may wish to recheck his facts. The coalition in the Gulf War consisted of approximately 34 countries providing troops. The "coalition of the willing" also contains approximately 34 countries providing troops. Most telling is that in the Gulf War the non-American nations contributed 24 percent of the ground forces while in the current war the non-American nations have contributed only 10.5 percent of the ground forces.